With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(100)

And, lastly, he might have done if he hadn’t been so long separated from his queen.

But, because of all of that, and because he was King Callum, far more impatient and intemperate than his father, especially weary, hungry and angry, their humiliation ran alongside their defeat.

Nikolas stared up at him obstinately.

“Sign it!” Callum barked.

Nikolas’s face twisted with fury but his voice was a pained whisper when he said, “She’s a pretty piece.”

Callum’s body grew taut but he sought patience.

“Sign the terms of surrender and accept punishment as leader of your followers. Don’t sign it and we don’t stop until we’ve brought low every last one of you,” Callum warned.

“A pretty piece,” Nikolas repeated quietly. “She’ll make a beautiful slave.”

At once, Callum’s arm swung out and the back of his fist caught Nikolas with a brutal blow to his jaw, sending him sprawling on his back.

“For f**k’s sake, sign it!” he roared, bending over the wolf.

Nikolas scrambled back to his knees and shouted fanatically, “They all will! When we align with the other immortals who believe as we do, who believe in the divine order of things, all the humans will be what they were always meant to be. Our slaves!”

Callum drew in a sharp breath through his nose.

Then he turned his back to Nikolas and walked three paces away.

Swiftly, he turned again, crouched low and, in a blur of motion, sprung up through the air and landed as wolf on the defeated leader.

He ripped Nikolas’s throat out with his teeth.

First.

Then he tore the warrior’s head off.

Springing back to man, he caught the towel thrown at him by one of his wolves, wiped the blood from his jaws and sauntered to the clothes that he’d long since learned to leap out of while becoming wolf. He grabbed his pants and pulled them up.

As he did so, he turned to Ryon. “Go through every last one until one of them signs it,” he gritted as he picked up his shirt and shrugged it on. “They don’t sign it then send the order to the commanders on the fronts of the other territories. Give every rebel wolf the opportunity to sign the surrender.” His eyes locked on his cousin. “If they don’t, slay them.”

“It’s done,” Ryon replied, eyes lit with fury even through his fatigue.

When Callum was dressed, he turned to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Ryon called.

Callum kept walking and didn’t look back when he answered, “To my queen. We’re going home.”

Chapter Fifteen

Castle

Sonia woke under the heavy hides, feeling the soft sheets and the traitorously pleasant ache that sat heavy in every muscle in her body.

Then her eyes opened.

She stared at Callum’s empty pillows and the memories of the last nine days crashed brutally into her brain.

Even while Callum was away battling the rebellion, Sonia spent that time adhering to his orders as given to her through Regan.

She was to train Kerry and Mabel in managing Clear as Diana couldn’t stay forever, nor, apparently, could Sonia. Under his edict she also began the process of hiring a new shop assistant who her girls would eventually choose and who would work alongside them. This was because Sonia, as soon as the rebellion was quashed, Regan told her, would be moving to Callum’s castle in Scotland.

She could not argue this “fact” with Regan as Regan had as little power as Sonia did.

Furthermore, Sonia couldn’t argue with Regan because Sonia spent those eight days with a very concerned mother. Her mother-in-law had lost a husband and son to this rebellion (Sonia learned) and she greatly feared for her family and her people.

Diana, Julianna, Helena and half a dozen other mates, mothers or sisters of warriors away at the fight spent time at her home, the latter of whom Sonia had not met until then. But, when Regan told her they lived close, she invited them to her home (comfort in numbers, Sonia thought). They all congregated with Sonia at her house and, as they would be, were also openly troubled.

Sonia tried to be calm and as upbeat as appropriate to soothe the worries of women (especially Regan) who she grew to care about in a short period of time. It was hard not to care about women whose faces were taut with anxiety and whose lives would be a misery if their warriors fell.

So Sonia kept the coffee going (in the mornings) and the wine flowing and food available (in the evenings) and did the best she could in a tense situation that seemed to last an age and not eight days.

Therefore, as Sonia was busy seeing to her female subjects while the males were at war, Sonia would have to argue with Callum when he got home about the fact that she intended to stay home and not move to his castle.

While Callum battled a faceless (to Sonia) enemy, Sonia waged her own battle.

A battle within.

She battled against her feelings of fear that he would be hurt (or worse). She also battled to control her feelings of rage that he had again, for whatever demented, Callum reason, fought to win a place in her heart and succeeded brilliantly only to prove he didn’t belong there.

This was proved time and again after he took off her ring, handed it to his mother and left without a single glance at her house. A place where he built the best Christmas she’d had in decades only to end it by nonchalantly blowing down his own house of cards.